Speaker 1: Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Welcome back, everyone to another episode of come Back Stories.
Speaker 2: Your co host Darren Waller joined with my brother, my friend,
Speaker 2: mister Donnie Starkins. Donnie, how we doing today?
Speaker 3: Bro? Doing great?
Speaker 4: Excited for this one, hyped up?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is a big time guest. If you
Speaker 2: don't know who this man is, you are in for
Speaker 2: a treat and for a pleasure. A man who I
Speaker 2: see as one of the top motivational speakers of this generation. Author,
Speaker 2: a coach, a husband, father, I mean, a man that
Speaker 2: can't be put in one box, and we're just honored
Speaker 2: to have his time, have his voice, and to feel
Speaker 2: his impact on the show. Today we got mister William
Speaker 2: King Hollis in the building, Man King, how you doing?
Speaker 3: You doing?
Speaker 5: Darren Man and Donnie man Is, Like I tell you,
Speaker 5: told you guys, it's been a dream of mine to
Speaker 5: come on this podcast and to have a great conversation
Speaker 5: with you guys.
Speaker 3: You guys do a lot, which I.
Speaker 5: You know, on mental health specifically that really touches my heart.
Speaker 5: I've been there multiple times in my life and it's
Speaker 5: just always a blessing to see individuals that.
Speaker 3: Pread coming back from some of the darkest hours of
Speaker 3: our life.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 3: So, like I said, this is my honor to be
Speaker 3: on here today.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, man, this is something that all three of us
Speaker 2: not only can relate to, but we embody and we've
Speaker 2: lived the triumphs and the pain of it, and we
Speaker 2: know it starts very early on, at least in our lives.
Speaker 2: And we'd like to know what was Keep paint a
Speaker 2: picture for what growing up was like for you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, man, it was like a lot of inner city kids.
Speaker 5: When I grew up in the city called Pontiac, Michigan.
Speaker 5: My mother, like I said, she basically my grandmother, moved
Speaker 5: from Monroe, Louisiana, and basically start running numbers. She had
Speaker 5: twelve children, started to cook crack cocaine and taught all
Speaker 5: twelve of those dren how to do the same, include
Speaker 5: my mother. So I was in a house that basically
Speaker 5: was like a gladiator school for teaching people.
Speaker 3: How to cook crack and say o crack.
Speaker 5: But one thing about it with me, King, I always
Speaker 5: noticed that, you know, our life wasn't normal. So you know,
Speaker 5: but as you stay in it long enough, it began
Speaker 5: to get normal to you and you adopt some of
Speaker 5: those same traits, some of those same anger issues, some
Speaker 5: of those same addictions. And I'm just blessed that God
Speaker 5: gave me the strength to always see more than my circumstances.
Speaker 5: My mother ended up moving out at fourteen years old,
Speaker 5: started selling drugs.
Speaker 3: In her own own place. She had me at sixteen
Speaker 3: years old, had my sister at fifteen, and she was
Speaker 3: molested as a child, so she eventually never healed from national.
Speaker 3: She eventually started to use heroin that.
Speaker 5: You know, the crazy thing about it is I never
Speaker 5: could notice until I became an older young man. She
Speaker 5: did a great job of covering it up, covering it up,
Speaker 5: and you know, it just showed her strength to to
Speaker 5: to just keep fighting and and and that's why I
Speaker 5: got a heart for, you know, the woman in general. Uh,
Speaker 5: because as I go around the country speaking, I meet
Speaker 5: a lot of young young women man that that that's
Speaker 5: been molested and never got the help, never got the therapy,
Speaker 5: and they turned into something that they're really not.
Speaker 3: But to get back to my.
Speaker 5: Story, Kade, Yeah, it was it was absolutely chaos, chaos
Speaker 5: that that I was living in.
Speaker 3: But I always I used to say, when I was
Speaker 3: a young kid.
Speaker 5: Man, I used to walk outside in the projects, and
Speaker 5: I used to always look up to the sky.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 5: I was always I never looked down. I always looked
Speaker 5: to the sky because I never liked the picture that
Speaker 5: was on the ground, the streets, the gangsters, the drug addicts,
Speaker 5: just the chaos that was going on. And always seeing
Speaker 5: that sky man, and I always realized that the world
Speaker 5: is so big, man, and I can change my life
Speaker 5: if I give it everything I got for my life.
Speaker 3: And I understood that at a very young age.
Speaker 5: Man, I always knew that the life that I was
Speaker 5: living was not normal, and I would never accept that.
Speaker 3: For my family, my wife, my son, my children. I
Speaker 3: just always wanted more.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: My father got incarcerated the first time, he had to
Speaker 5: do six years when I was about, say, about seven
Speaker 5: or eight years old. Missed him for a long time,
Speaker 5: and then he got another three years after that, and
Speaker 5: it's firing to a year of a crime. Then I
Speaker 5: ended up having to move back and forth, bouncing, you know,
Speaker 5: a minute for a foster home and then bouncing into
Speaker 5: my grandmother's house. So they finally took us in. To
Speaker 5: be honest with you, man, I went through a lot
Speaker 5: of a lot of a lot of tearing down. You know,
Speaker 5: a lot a lot of uh uh you know, jokes
Speaker 5: from cousins. You know, your mom's a crackhead, your father's
Speaker 5: in jail. You're gonna be just like your father and uh. Man,
Speaker 5: I tell everybody, I give God all the glory for
Speaker 5: the man that I am and who I am, because
Speaker 5: through all the pain, through all the thing that was
Speaker 5: supposed to make me angry, God always kept love in
Speaker 5: my heart.
Speaker 3: And that's the only thing that I wanted to exude.
Speaker 5: I realized that, you know, the richest man in the
Speaker 5: world is not really the man that has millions of
Speaker 5: dollars in the bank account. Man, it's the man that
Speaker 5: that comes home to a family. Since that's derriertable with
Speaker 5: his children, teaches his son how to go further, which
Speaker 5: is basically the real definition of father. And and that's
Speaker 5: what I wake up every single day to do.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: And hey, I want to I want to hop in
Speaker 2: and asked you like, through all these peaks and valleys,
Speaker 2: through not only your personal life, through physically, through football,
Speaker 2: mentally with your family, your situation and football, like I'm
Speaker 2: seeing all these things, like, was there ever a moment
Speaker 2: in all of this where you realized that you had
Speaker 2: a gift for speaking, or was this like after your
Speaker 2: football career ended?
Speaker 3: This was?
Speaker 5: This was after I was it was after the football career.
Speaker 5: So basically King, I ended up cracking my l one
Speaker 5: vertebrate uh down. And when I when I got the
Speaker 5: wrong Georgia, I ended up playing one game. Then I
Speaker 5: had a mini stroke. I had to play in the
Speaker 5: game because if you didn't play, they put you out
Speaker 5: the house. So I played the worst game. My life
Speaker 5: got cut. The mother and my child called me and
Speaker 5: it was like, will are you okay? And I said,
Speaker 5: I'm doing the best. At this point, we not together
Speaker 5: no more. The distance it broke everything up. And uh,
Speaker 5: you know, I said, no, I need a ticket to Printing,
Speaker 5: New Jersey. So it's getting closer to how to speak.
Speaker 3: It started. I go to Trenton, New Jersey. I got
Speaker 3: a one way bus ticket about twenty.
Speaker 5: Dollars to my name. I got nothing all the way.
Speaker 5: The flight was from Rome, Georgia all the way to.
Speaker 3: Trenton, New Jersey.
Speaker 5: Trenton Freedom was the team owned by these millionaires that
Speaker 5: specialize on solar pattern and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: But they brung me in. I had a tryout. I
Speaker 3: made the team.
Speaker 5: Next day, I was in a hotel and they had
Speaker 5: all the restaurants. I mean, I felt like I was rigiating,
Speaker 5: even about the money. It was like I'm eating square meals.
Speaker 5: So when I get there, I dominate break the single
Speaker 5: game sack record on Mother's Day. And after that game,
Speaker 5: I see some of the CFL scouts, So I'm thinking
Speaker 5: I'm getting ready to go to the CFL. Get my
Speaker 5: opportunity to go over there, and boom, at the end
Speaker 5: of the season, I don't get the call from the scouts.
Speaker 5: I go to a workout with one of the Toronto
Speaker 5: Argonaut scouts and he basically said, the coach at Trenton
Speaker 5: Freedom said that you had mental health issues. He used
Speaker 5: my past story to tell him that he's not mentally
Speaker 5: ready to go because he wanted to secure a bigger
Speaker 5: contract for him to move up to a higher level
Speaker 5: in the rental league, so he used me.
Speaker 3: As a pond.
Speaker 5: I found that out, cuss his ass out, and once
Speaker 5: again I'm back homeless. So I go to Dover, Delaware
Speaker 5: with a teammate after the season, and you know, I'm
Speaker 5: bouncing house to house and then the coach that I
Speaker 5: broke the single game sack record, Bernie Bernie Northtowski.
Speaker 3: He actually was on.
Speaker 5: Facebook getting a blood infusion and he saw my post
Speaker 5: on Facebook, like, man, life is so tiring. I said,
Speaker 5: I don't think I ever played ball again. And he
Speaker 5: was like, I got a team for you, harrisburg Stampe
Speaker 5: Marcus Coasting. Team down here Hersheypa. He brings me down
Speaker 5: to Hersheypa. I'm in a gym doing the workout. My
Speaker 5: whole right side go out on me.
Speaker 3: I go to the doctor.
Speaker 5: They say, will you got an air one vertebrate crack?
Speaker 5: You basically can't play football no more. I never tell
Speaker 5: a coach this is where God come in. He comes
Speaker 5: in now getting closer to the speech. He comes in
Speaker 5: and and the coach cast me one day and be like,
Speaker 5: will Marcus Coaster is folding the team. He's canceling up
Speaker 5: the season. He no longer wants to invest in the team.
Speaker 5: He's gonna shut the team down. So if I would
Speaker 5: have went in that season and I probably wouldn't even
Speaker 5: be talking to I've probably been a para believe it
Speaker 5: or something. And Uh, I told coach about my injury.
Speaker 5: He moved me into his apartment. I mean not his apartment,
Speaker 5: his house with his wife and his three kids. I'm
Speaker 5: the only black guy down in the reading pa in
Speaker 5: his neighborhood. I'm basically staying in the basement until he said, hey,
Speaker 5: will you want to coach the D line with this
Speaker 5: Arena team. I got down here and and and read
Speaker 5: and I said, for sure. I was like that, that'll
Speaker 5: be honor. And that's when I learned the power of coaching.
Speaker 5: It's a beautiful, beautiful thing to watch people, you know,
Speaker 5: do what you teach. So one day I was speaking
Speaker 5: to the players on the sideline and and I had
Speaker 5: already I was getting ready to I was moving out
Speaker 5: of Coach nortowsky basement.
Speaker 3: Just didn't want to be a burd into the family.
Speaker 3: Ain't of that anymore. So I go into the hotel
Speaker 3: rooms with the players. Sometimes a player will leave with
Speaker 3: a lady or a woman or anything like that. And
Speaker 3: one particular day I had to sleep on side of
Speaker 3: the Turkey Yo gas station. I'm sleeping on something. I'm
Speaker 3: telling basically relaxing, I can call it relaxing. I'm sitting
Speaker 3: on side of the Turkey Yo gas station and it's
Speaker 3: early in the morning.
Speaker 5: I get up and the teacher that saw me talking
Speaker 5: to the Kings at the game said, basically, I would
Speaker 5: love for you to come speak to my young man
Speaker 5: the way you spoke to those young men.
Speaker 3: And I said, why not. You know, I got you.
Speaker 3: I could be there.
Speaker 5: The school was right down the road. So I got
Speaker 5: up and probably around twelve thirty and went down there
Speaker 5: to the school. I spoke to five young men within
Speaker 5: five minutes, and he was in tears at this point.
Speaker 5: It was the first time talking about my story and
Speaker 5: it broke me down. And people will be surprised by
Speaker 5: telling your story. Just speaking your story out loud, it'll overwhelm,
Speaker 5: it'll make you emotional.
Speaker 3: And I was walking back to the hotel. I had
Speaker 3: a four or five in my bag.
Speaker 5: I was about to go into Abraham Lincoln Hotel and
Speaker 5: committed suicide in the bathroom. About five sets before I
Speaker 5: got to the hotel, I got a call from Miss Robinson.
Speaker 5: Cheryl Robinson. Shout out to Cheryl Robinson. She said, will
Speaker 5: how much he charged to speak? I knew nothing about speaking,
Speaker 5: and I said seventy five one hundred dollars or something
Speaker 5: like that. So basically I went to the hotel and
Speaker 5: I went to the computer room. I typed in in
Speaker 5: motivational speaking. They nothing about it. Les Brown popped up
Speaker 5: man this man. I seen him speaking in the Georgia Dome.
Speaker 5: I saw he talked about his painting, kept a smile
Speaker 5: on his face. I just just like we used to
Speaker 5: watch when we was literally watch football videos. I studied
Speaker 5: this whole monnerism, but I just was myself and just
Speaker 5: took pieces of what he had and used my story.
Speaker 3: And I went into the assembly.
Speaker 5: A week later, I got my one hundred dollars first
Speaker 5: of being paid, got a standing ovation.
Speaker 3: King.
Speaker 5: Every five hundred students, every single student came down and
Speaker 5: shook my hand.
Speaker 3: Cried tears, and that was the moment I realized that
Speaker 3: this was my gift the whole time.
Speaker 5: And you fast forward, you know, ten years later, over
Speaker 5: one point three billion views on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Now platinum spoken word Albums history.
Speaker 5: The first week of to speak during Milan Fashion Week
Speaker 5: of Philipply Paris Hilton super Bowl commercial this year featured
Speaker 5: in Super Bowl commercial. Last year, just did an Undermer
Speaker 5: commercial with Stephen Curry and King also received the Ambassador
Speaker 5: of Peace Award at Kingston, Jamaica. Spoken in Australia. And
Speaker 5: it all started by me telling my story in that
Speaker 5: high school. So when I tell people I realized this,
Speaker 5: I realized that God this whole time, the love that
Speaker 5: I had for my mother, it never really was my
Speaker 5: job to save her. You know, our job to save anyone.
Speaker 3: That's God's job.
Speaker 5: All our job is is to basically give our message
Speaker 5: and give our truth and help as many people as
Speaker 5: we can.
Speaker 3: But the person that can only truly get it done
Speaker 3: is God.
Speaker 5: And you know, he turned a kid from the projects
Speaker 5: into one of the you know, they say, one of
Speaker 5: the greatest young speakers of this generation. And one thing
Speaker 5: about my story then a lot of speakers, can you know?
Speaker 5: That separates me from a lot of speakers, is that
Speaker 5: when I speak, it's not that you hear me, they
Speaker 5: feel me, you know what I mean. And I just
Speaker 5: thank God for giving me this gift.
Speaker 3: I'm setting in a home. Man, I got home, I
Speaker 3: got a family, I got a wife, you know.
Speaker 5: And the best thing He's ever done for me is
Speaker 5: make me rich on the inside before he made me
Speaker 5: rich on the outside.
Speaker 3: And that's why I'm humble. That's why I look at
Speaker 3: myself as a grain of salt. On the ground. So
Speaker 3: I can never look down upon people.
Speaker 5: And I believe when you truly work for God, your
Speaker 5: promotions become everlasting.
Speaker 3: And now I'm an author. My book was I'm a
Speaker 3: self published author.
Speaker 5: Was putting Walmart, Barns and Nobles, Amazon Prime, It's a bestseller.
Speaker 5: And man, all I can say is, I can never
Speaker 5: it wasn't me. My story and my sacrifice was for
Speaker 5: all the time. Right now we're living in where kids
Speaker 5: are lost, women don't love themselves, young men don't know
Speaker 5: who they are, They don't know how to control their emotions.
Speaker 5: And I'm so grateful that I'm a speaker that can
Speaker 5: walk into any room and I don't care if you
Speaker 5: got murderers, the killers, the drug dealers.
Speaker 3: They feel me and I believe God gave me up
Speaker 3: my gift to motivate the individuals that thought motivation wasn't
Speaker 3: even real. And that's the blessing that I have.
Speaker 5: And I tell everybody when I was telling my speeches,
Speaker 5: when I was saying my speech, I was talking to
Speaker 5: myself king and the world simply was listening. And that's
Speaker 5: the only That's what I tell everybody, that I was
Speaker 5: talking to myself. I had to speak self life and
Speaker 5: to myself.
Speaker 3: To be the man that I am today.
Speaker 5: And that's why I got a passion of spreading this
Speaker 5: message all over the world. I got a passion of
Speaker 5: helping with mental health because I know my story is
Speaker 5: not a story that I'm just talking to you.
Speaker 3: I lived this. You know.
Speaker 5: This past Christmas day, my father and my father was
Speaker 5: released from prison after doing eight years. First time seeing
Speaker 5: me as a motivational speaker. I flew into Michigan, got
Speaker 5: to see him, got an airbnb. You know, we first
Speaker 5: got out of prison. They just want to eat all
Speaker 5: the new foods, introducing them the door dash.
Speaker 3: I'm feeding them.
Speaker 5: And the first time in my life, I saw my
Speaker 5: father as an old man. He's falling asleep. He's always
Speaker 5: been this big superman god to me. And I flew
Speaker 5: back home to Atlanta, and in eleven days after my
Speaker 5: son was born, he was murdered and left for dead
Speaker 5: in Detroit this past Christmas. So I lost my father,
Speaker 5: bro I lost my mother and all that pain that
Speaker 5: I had that will break a lot of meat uh
Speaker 5: and women.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: I believe that, you know, God just broke it full
Speaker 5: a circle that you know, he sacrificed himself for us,
Speaker 5: and they say we live in the limit the image
Speaker 5: and likeness of God, and a man's job on his
Speaker 5: earth to me is to sacrifice his life and sacrifice
Speaker 5: himself for the betterment of his family and the betterment
Speaker 5: of the young kings that's coming up from behind him.
Speaker 5: So it wasn't for me to go out and try
Speaker 5: to be this big celebrity. I just wanted to be
Speaker 5: a man that could just say I sacrifice God. I
Speaker 5: sacrifice everything to help your people and to keep love
Speaker 5: and God in people heart.
Speaker 3: So that that's my life king, and that that that's
Speaker 3: a I give all glory to the most.
Speaker 5: Hot man, all prices of mo hot for everything I
Speaker 5: got and even being able to be on this podcast
Speaker 5: with you, guys.
Speaker 3: Man, it's just a it's been a hell of a journey, man,
Speaker 3: but the pain was worth it. Well, it's cool.
Speaker 4: It's cool to hear you say that it's been a
Speaker 4: dream for you to be on our podcast because I
Speaker 4: look at you as a speaker, and I know Darren
Speaker 4: and I have talked about doing more of this speaking.
Speaker 4: Darren's not going to play football forever, so it's just
Speaker 4: cool for us to hear you say that it's a
Speaker 4: dream to be on our podcast when we see you
Speaker 4: just crushing it on the biggest stage and facing what
Speaker 4: for many people is their biggest fears, talking in front
Speaker 4: of a group, but not only talking in front of
Speaker 4: a group, but being able to deliver in a way
Speaker 4: that people can relate. And I think that's what I'm
Speaker 4: hearing in everything you're saying. And that's why I relate
Speaker 4: because I can feel I can feel you, and it's
Speaker 4: exactly why every piece of motivation that you give people,
Speaker 4: you're just talking to yourself, which is why it's why
Speaker 4: it's so relatable. I have a question for you regarding
Speaker 4: because I've heard you talk about how being broke as
Speaker 4: a mindset, it's not the lack of funds, it's the
Speaker 4: lack of belief. But what do you think right now,
Speaker 4: like in the world, what do you see is like
Speaker 4: the root cause or the commonality of people's broken down
Speaker 4: belief systems.
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: Just I believe right now in the world, they killed
Speaker 5: every example that can teach us. If you watch the
Speaker 5: world man, all the great leaders that was trying to
Speaker 5: educate and teach us and put us in the right mindset.
Speaker 5: Some way, somehow, something happens soon. And now you have
Speaker 5: a generation of lost souls that now they believe that
Speaker 5: they believe fame and being in a light is more
Speaker 5: important than family. The woman believes that being a model
Speaker 5: is more important than being a mother. And you know,
Speaker 5: if you have a generation of children that that doesn't
Speaker 5: love themselves, that doesn't value their lives, that doesn't know
Speaker 5: where they started or where they come from, you will
Speaker 5: have a lost generation of people. And one thing I
Speaker 5: tell people, money is not the greatest thing you can have.
Speaker 5: Purpose is the greatest thing that you can have. So
Speaker 5: it's so many individuals in the world right now that's
Speaker 5: walking around with no purpose.
Speaker 3: They have no purpose for life.
Speaker 5: Man, And I tell everybody, once you find your purpose,
Speaker 5: it can heal all the pain of your life. Because
Speaker 5: what happens is individuals are going the wrong direction they
Speaker 5: whole life. King And this is when the mental health
Speaker 5: thing pops up. They're going the wrong direction their whole life.
Speaker 5: And when they realize that they when they finally realize
Speaker 5: they been going the wrong way their whole life. Whether
Speaker 5: you have to do in the DPS, you got to
Speaker 5: set your current destination to get to your final destination.
Speaker 3: And when people jump off the ledge and commit suicide.
Speaker 5: It's because of the simple fact that they do not
Speaker 5: have the strength to go all the way back to
Speaker 5: the beginning and do it the right way. And that's
Speaker 5: the problem in the world. We got a first identify
Speaker 5: with what's hurting us. You got a hurt world. King,
Speaker 5: kings and queens like myself that buried their mothers, young
Speaker 5: women that was molested and taken advantage of but never
Speaker 5: got the help they needed. You got a broken society
Speaker 5: where young kids are raising kids. Our grandmothers are children
Speaker 5: now they're not the old elderly women. And then you
Speaker 5: got men that walk around dressed as boys. You know,
Speaker 5: back in the day, when you're walk wash a man
Speaker 5: walk around, you will see a man in his suit.
Speaker 5: You'll see a man in his shoes. You will see them.
Speaker 5: You can see a man. But now you got the
Speaker 5: older man competing with the younger man. The older man
Speaker 5: looks like a boy. It's a scene a boardwalk Empire
Speaker 5: that changed my life. And it was al Capone talking
Speaker 5: to this Jewish man. So al Capone kept acting the
Speaker 5: Jewish man, Why do you keep calling me a boy?
Speaker 5: Al Capone's able to show the Jewish man around the city.
Speaker 5: So he said, why do you keep calling me a bone?
Speaker 5: They say, this is a true story. Why you keep
Speaker 5: calling me a boy? And the Jewish man said, as
Speaker 5: long as you wear the hat of a boy, you
Speaker 5: will always be perceived as a boy, no matter if
Speaker 5: you like it or not.
Speaker 3: And they said, al.
Speaker 5: Capone never put on a hat a boy's hat anymore.
Speaker 5: He never wore regular slacks anymore. When this man told
Speaker 5: him that, because he realized that in the world, the
Speaker 5: way you are perceived is the way you are treated,
Speaker 5: and it's not right that people treat you that way.
Speaker 5: But one thing about this generation. If a boy never
Speaker 5: sees a man, how can he ever become one. So
Speaker 5: now you got the rappers, you got the little boosters,
Speaker 5: you got all these other all these rappers.
Speaker 3: That that's old enough to.
Speaker 5: Be my father behaving like a child. So if a
Speaker 5: child sees a man behaving as a child, he's always
Speaker 5: gonna be a child. He's gonna believe being a child
Speaker 5: is a man. And then he gets into a marriage
Speaker 5: and don't know how to control his emotions. Something I
Speaker 5: speak on often. If you never learn how to control
Speaker 5: your emotions, you can never truly be a man. You
Speaker 5: will always be a boy. And goes back to what
Speaker 5: I told you was one of these boys, these little kids,
Speaker 5: they was hurt. One of these little girls, they was hurt,
Speaker 5: and when they were hurt, they.
Speaker 3: Stayed that age.
Speaker 5: They might have turned twenty eight this year, But when
Speaker 5: that little girl was hurt, when she was twelve years old,
Speaker 5: she's still twelve years old. That little boy that waited
Speaker 5: at the door for his father to come home, but
Speaker 5: he never came. He's still a hurt little boy, but
Speaker 5: just dressing a man uniform.
Speaker 3: So what I feel the.
Speaker 5: World is lacking right now is therapists therapy, being able
Speaker 5: to talk about their pains and being able to share
Speaker 5: their pains without being talked about, or taking advantage of
Speaker 5: a safe place for them to express themselves. That's why
Speaker 5: I wrote this book for one day. I want to
Speaker 5: get it into the schools, man, I want. I want
Speaker 5: to create a curriculum where kids get up and tell
Speaker 5: their stories in front of their brothers, the Hispanic brothers,
Speaker 5: the Asian brothers, the white brothers, so they can see
Speaker 5: our stories not too different, our pain is the same,
Speaker 5: and that's gonna build the love. And then what you're
Speaker 5: gonna get kids doing is just like me telling my stories,
Speaker 5: saying my life, it's gonna save theirs. Then the counselors
Speaker 5: can set in the room and identify the red flags
Speaker 5: just hurting these children, the things that they don't have
Speaker 5: to ask some questions for. They can just ask the questions.
Speaker 5: And then you get children writing books about their lives.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Then you got then then you say, no, can you
Speaker 3: not just a project? Baby? You're an author.
Speaker 5: Your story matters. And that's what it's all about with me, man,
Speaker 5: That's that's that's that's that's this is, this is my life, man.
Speaker 3: Is to.
Speaker 5: It's to inspire billions of individuals. Man, and I'm doing that.
Speaker 5: I've done this without management. I got in the Super Bowl.
Speaker 5: God has been my manager. Man, I don't have a team.
Speaker 5: I don't have a social media team.
Speaker 3: You know how I get my content? People from all
Speaker 3: over the world top it up and I take it off,
Speaker 3: They page and post it.
Speaker 5: That that that that's how I built my brand. Everything
Speaker 5: you see is organic. That's why I was able to
Speaker 5: go over million million plus views on all my videos.
Speaker 5: My first speech, my football speech. The number if you
Speaker 5: go to YouTube right best football speech ever, the number
Speaker 5: one speech. I was homeless in Huntersville, Alabama.
Speaker 3: King homeless. I was homeless.
Speaker 5: When I was over three million views on you, I
Speaker 5: was still homeless. It wasn't That's what I learned. I
Speaker 5: had to realize, like God, I didn't give you this
Speaker 5: job to become a starting rich. He gave you this
Speaker 5: job will to say lives. So I took my last
Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty dollars and went to Columbia High School.
Speaker 5: A coach asked me to speak. I gave a video
Speaker 5: wager for one hundred and twenty bucks. I gave him
Speaker 5: a hundred bucks, actually because I kept twenty. I just
Speaker 5: got a limit of tours, all black tours. And I
Speaker 5: needed gas because I was leaving. I just got evicted
Speaker 5: from my apartment. I go in there, I dropped the
Speaker 5: speech to the football speech King. I leave go down
Speaker 5: to drive down to Atlanta. Sleeping in the AMC Theater
Speaker 5: in Camp Creek in Georgia. I'm sleeping in the I'm sleeping.
Speaker 3: In the parking lot.
Speaker 5: The next morning, I wake up and the videographer called
Speaker 5: me and said, I posted a clip last night of
Speaker 5: the speech and it's going viral.
Speaker 3: On Twitter. It went viral on Twitter and now it's
Speaker 3: the number one football speech in the world.
Speaker 5: That's why I tell everybody there's nobody that can take
Speaker 5: this away from me, because God gave it to me.
Speaker 3: And I tell people all the time.
Speaker 5: And to bring it full circle, the man that reached
Speaker 5: out to me and called my phone the legendary Les Brown,
Speaker 5: when I was homeless setting in Camp Creek Less Brown
Speaker 5: was in the hospital getting the blood transfusion defeating cancer.
Speaker 5: He listened to one of my speeches called the Journey,
Speaker 5: and it starts off with I didn't come this far
Speaker 5: to only come this far. That's the same quote Drake
Speaker 5: and Kim Kardashian using. By the way, that's the quote
Speaker 5: she heard on the internet.
Speaker 3: When when he heard that, it inspired him to keep going.
Speaker 5: He flew down to Atlanta and the man that I
Speaker 5: turned on the computer the first day I ever spoke
Speaker 5: this is God man met me in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: We met at the grocery store. First, got got a
Speaker 3: little he loves watermelon, It's crazy.
Speaker 5: We got some some fruit from I'm the Groceries, the
Speaker 5: whole food store. Then we went to a house and
Speaker 5: where he did an interview with me and passed the torch,
Speaker 5: which is he also actually.
Speaker 3: Let me grab something for you guys. He actually just
Speaker 3: wrote he wrote the forward. He wrote the forward to
Speaker 3: this book. We'll tell you, guys, let's legendary, Les Brin.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, guys, kidding me. So that's who wrote the
Speaker 3: forward to my book. See that legendary.
Speaker 5: When I say God built my career, he built my life.
Speaker 5: He created the entity William King Hollis whatever they want
Speaker 5: to call me. But I tell everybody, if you want
Speaker 5: to win in life, don't ever think a man can
Speaker 5: change your life more than God can. Because when I
Speaker 5: had no food, he gave me meals. When I had
Speaker 5: no underwear, he gave me clothes. When I he never
Speaker 5: gave me what I wanted, but he gave me what
Speaker 5: I needed. And if you work long enough, how they
Speaker 5: say that cut will run it over, It'll run it
Speaker 5: over for the rest of your life if you if
Speaker 5: you give your life to him and you serve, and
Speaker 5: you work for him daily. And that's the reason why
Speaker 5: the kid that couldn't read they was sixteen years old
Speaker 5: is a best selling author and one of the best
Speaker 5: young speakers in the world.
Speaker 3: And I believe my story has it haven't even hit
Speaker 3: the ice bird of of what I would do and
Speaker 3: how many people I will aspire leading up to this
Speaker 3: next generation. And I believe that I was created for
Speaker 3: this very moment in the world.
Speaker 2: And my time is My time is now, no doubt, man,
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, you're embodying everything that a comeback
Speaker 2: story is. And you know, I believe God is ultimately
Speaker 2: the author of all of our comeback stories, you know,
Speaker 2: like the timing of it. We don't know the exact
Speaker 2: circumstances of it. We don't know the amount of pain
Speaker 2: we have to endure. We don't know. But ultimately, if
Speaker 2: we endure, Ultimately, if we push and uh and have
Speaker 2: faith that it can't get better, it will get better.
Speaker 3: It will.
Speaker 2: And but the people in order for them to believe
Speaker 2: that they need new examples, I feel like there's so
Speaker 2: much truth in what you said about the examples that
Speaker 2: we have. The leaders that we have, they're not the
Speaker 2: same quality, you know what I'm saying. And that's where
Speaker 2: that's where us three come in. Like having this platform
Speaker 2: and being able to utilize this platform to give people
Speaker 2: new examples and to have men that are successful and
Speaker 2: real and authentic that have pain, that have tough experiences,
Speaker 2: and that develop real lessons from that, and that there's
Speaker 2: so much more substance in the riches and the fame,
Speaker 2: but just real character growth, character development. Man, you really
Speaker 2: are that, and you are and you know you're your
Speaker 2: story isn't over. You've come back from many things, but
Speaker 2: you're still coming back here, coming back to bring to
Speaker 2: bring people with you, man, And so I just want
Speaker 2: to honor you and say that we appreciate you whether Man.
Speaker 3: Thank you, damn Man.
Speaker 5: That's truly an honor Man once again, Donnie, thank you again,
Speaker 5: big guy. You guys are amazing man, And thank you
Speaker 5: guys for creating this podcast. You know for so many people, Man,
Speaker 5: and Donnie, I want to get with you one day.
Speaker 5: I want to create a podcast myself, man. So it's
Speaker 5: a lot of things I need to learn on that
Speaker 5: in that podcast, wheld, I think I could create I
Speaker 5: go viral mostly everybody podcast, and I'm tired of go
Speaker 5: a viral other people podcasts now my own. But you know,
Speaker 5: I see a podcast as a beacon of light to
Speaker 5: inspire and help a lot of people, man, And hopefully
Speaker 5: we all could collab on that stage one day. Man
Speaker 5: and do and do something, do something magnificent. I actually
Speaker 5: have an idea man, and and it's uh, it's called healing.
Speaker 5: It was it was called healing with William King Hollin
Speaker 5: and it's basically what you get on a whole bunch
Speaker 5: of group of men. You gotta breakout session with women
Speaker 5: and what you want. What I want to do is
Speaker 5: I want to talk about I want to give them
Speaker 5: a speech on mental health. But I also want to
Speaker 5: open the room for every man to share their traumas together.
Speaker 5: I want to cry tiers together. I want to let
Speaker 5: that pain out together. I want to heal together inside
Speaker 5: the room. And I believe you guys would be great
Speaker 5: to be a part of that, and and and and
Speaker 5: and really help a lot of people. Uh there, and
Speaker 5: a lot of people look up and admire you for
Speaker 5: your game. But I tell everybody for a long time
Speaker 5: that brother is a huge advocate for mental health.
Speaker 3: And and way more than a football player.
Speaker 5: So I just want to thank you Kaine for being
Speaker 5: the stand up individual that you are man and being
Speaker 5: the leader that you are. And Donnie, thank you brother
Speaker 5: for always staying consistent, always supporting. I seen your likes,
Speaker 5: I seen your shares and and it means a lot
Speaker 5: coming from a brother like yourself. Man, So once again, brothers,
Speaker 5: I am extremely honored to have the opportunity to be
Speaker 5: on this podcast today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you will.
Speaker 4: I feel like we heard your story. And there's so
Speaker 4: much adversity and just in the football and how much
Speaker 4: rejection and hurdles you had to face, but also your life.
Speaker 4: So we'll have to there's so many just one liners
Speaker 4: and quotes and a lot of fire that we didn't
Speaker 4: get to, so we'll probably have to get you back
Speaker 4: for around two. Maybe you can, maybe you can take
Speaker 4: us out and just let us understand the listener out
Speaker 4: there that just can't understand why this pain, how it
Speaker 4: possibly could be necessary. Can you just take us out
Speaker 4: and tell us why pain is necessary?
Speaker 5: Probably pain is the Neto theory because pain is the
Speaker 5: only thing that can strengthen you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I was watching this show on the Discovery Channel. I
Speaker 5: think it was the Discovery Channel, but it was the
Speaker 5: jiu jitsu coach and practiced this thing on his fighters
Speaker 5: where he hits him in the same place over and
Speaker 5: over and over again, and the fighters start to say
Speaker 5: that this is painful, but the coach will say, what
Speaker 5: if I told you you could take more pain, But
Speaker 5: as you continue to hit him in.
Speaker 3: That same spot, the pain that he thought was pain
Speaker 3: no longer was pain.
Speaker 5: And what I tell everybody is pain is the thing
Speaker 5: that separates those guys that gets the opportunity and fails,
Speaker 5: and that other person gets the opportunity and to seize
Speaker 5: by any means necessary as a man. And I don't
Speaker 5: want to speak for women. I just know right now
Speaker 5: for a man, you can't be a king without pain.
Speaker 5: If you go back and you do your research, every
Speaker 5: great king that became a king had to take a loss.
Speaker 5: He had to lay down and bleed awhile. He had
Speaker 5: let down and bleed awhile so he for him to
Speaker 5: become who he was born to be. So what I
Speaker 5: tell everybody the pain is the portal to the purpose.
Speaker 5: And once you get through the pain and you get
Speaker 5: to that purpose, it won't be a human being on
Speaker 5: this earth that will be able to stop you from
Speaker 5: accomplishing anything you want. If you want to turn that
Speaker 5: vote onto a ferrari, you can do it. If you
Speaker 5: want to turn that apartment into a mansion, you can
Speaker 5: do it. And if that family tree is rotten.
Speaker 3: You let it go and you.
Speaker 5: Replan another one. You water it different, you take care
Speaker 5: of it different, and you love on it different. But pain,
Speaker 5: my friends, is the portal. The greatness can't get there
Speaker 5: without it. God got to test you.
Speaker 2: That man, sir, on that No, that's a mic drop man.
Speaker 2: We appreciate y'all checking us out. Appreciate you king from
Speaker 2: being here with us.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: We hope you guysure to take some and from this
Speaker 2: into your own journey. I know I have, I know
Speaker 2: Donnie has as well, So appreciate you guys. Join in.
Speaker 1: Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
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